You can't ask me that: Going anywhere nice this year?

Continuing her series tackling socially unacceptable questions, Christine Manby asks whether going on holiday has become a faux pas

Illustrations by Tom Ford (Tom Ford)

“Going anywhere nice this year?” was always the second question a hairdresser asked. Right after the classic “who did this cut then?”, delivered while examining your grown-out layers with a look of thinly veiled disgust. “Well, actually, Andrea, it was you...”

Let’s get back to holidays. Quick. Much safer ground. It’s the sort of question you can ask anyone without causing a fight. Who doesn’t like talking about holidays? Holidays they’ve been on. Holidays they’re going on. Holidays they would like to go on if their lottery numbers came up. You can get at least three perms’ worth of conversation out of this single simple topic. At least you used to be able to. Holidays are no longer the guilt-free pleasure they used to be, you know.

“We’ve booked a mini-break to Barcelona, actually. We’re staying in an Airbnb right on Las Ramblas.”

“You’re what? You selfish, shaggy-haired so-and-so...”

Didn’t you get the memo? You can’t go to Barcelona any more. Or Venice. Or Florence. Or Paris. Or Rome. Or Berlin. Or Dubrovnik. Or Split. Or Reykjavik. Or just about anywhere else you care to mention. They’re all ruined. Ruined, the lot of them. By people like you who insist on taking your Pinterest wish lists live.

For all sorts of reasons, visitor numbers to many European resorts and cities have rocketed over the past few years. Budget airlines and Airbnb have made tourism cheaper. Meanwhile, the perceived instability of previously popular resorts such as Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt is sending British holidaymakers flocking to places like Spain instead.

The problems with mass tourism are myriad. Having to wait 20 minutes to take a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa is the least of it. For locals, it can mean being priced out of your hometown as landlords choose the easy gains of short-term holiday lets over longer-term tenancies. As many as one in five apartments in Florence is being let through Airbnb. The local population in Venice has dropped precipitously, thanks to residential buildings being converted into hotels. The city’s great fish market is reported to be struggling to stay afloat as a result. The tourists are happy to take pictures of the fish but they’re not buying them like the Venetians used to.

London meanwhile has the third highest concentration of Airbnb listings in the world, with one landlord making £12m from 881 properties in 2016. That’s 881 properties that aren’t available to local workers. The effect of tourism on housing markets is very real. Add to that extra congestion. Higher prices in the shops. The environmental impact.

(Tom Ford)

In Spain they’re fighting back. Barcelona, Ibiza and Majorca have all seen angry protests. Governments are acting too. Majorca has doubled its tourist tax and put a ban on short-term lets in Palma. Amsterdam has introduced a ban on shops catering only to a tourist crowd. In Venice, there’s been a curb on new hotels and fast-food outlets. You’ll no longer see cruise ships sailing by St Mark’s Square. All good initiatives. These places need to be saved from the travelling hordes.

Well, yes. No one disagrees that local governments should favour their citizens over visitors. Young Venetians should be able to afford to live in the city they grew up in (as should young Londoners). However, there’s a definite element of snobbery in some of the laments about over-tourism I’ve been reading lately. It seems the writers think that the problem isn’t just that there are too many tourists. It’s that there are too many of the wrong sort of tourists. The type of tourists who want to see the world by cruise ship, for a start.

Cruise ships come in for a lot of stick from anti-tourism campaigners. Why wouldn’t they? They dock in places of outstanding beauty, belching out fumes and disgorging thousands of passengers who don’t actually spend anything landside. Why aren’t they just banned from everywhere? Because perhaps the same cities that are “ruined” by their visits would miss them rather more than you’d imagine if they were gone.

Martyn Griffiths of Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) Europe explains that, contrary to popular belief, those cruise passengers do spend money when they pour off the ship on excursions – some €4.2bn (£3.7bn) in Europe alone. Meanwhile, the cruise lines spend more than €8bn for goods and services in support of their European cruise operations. That spending directly supports 403,621 jobs. And while cruise ships comprise less than 1 per cent of the world’s sea traffic, they are at the forefront of pioneering and developing responsible environmental practices.

Nearly two million Brits take cruises every year. What’s more, a cruise holiday is an ideal choice for people with disabilities. Should they just stay at home? Likewise the elderly? Moving back onto dry land, should people who don’t know how to pronounce “tagliatelle” be banned from carrying passports at all? (A former boyfriend of mine once accused me of saying tagliatelle wrong “just to upset him”.)

Sure we’ve all encountered tourists who spend all their time complaining that “it isn’t like this at home”, who want to be able to speak English loudly and slowly wherever they go and be perfectly understood. But that type of tourist isn’t actually defined by age, social class or voting preference. And maybe, just maybe, travel might soften their edges.

Travel breaks down barriers. Fifteen years ago I took a train trip with my father. We travelled by Eurostar from London to Brussels and from Brussels overnight to Berlin. As we sat down to dinner in our Berlin hotel, Dad admitted to me that, as a child of the Second World War, he had never expected to visit Germany. He would not have chosen to travel there had I not suggested the trip. He told me he was surprised to find the Germans so warm and welcoming towards us despite our shared painful history. He said he wished he’d gone to Germany sooner so that he might have known the truth about how that war shaped a generation of Germans too. Our experiences in Berlin changed a point of view he had held for more than 50 years.

On that train trip, I was humbled to discover just how much I didn’t know about my fellow Europeans for a start. No amount of reading compares with sharing a train carriage with students from every corner of the globe, swapping snacks and stories and shedding old stereotypes. As Euripides said: “Experience, travel – these are education in themselves.”

But how can we continue to benefit from that education responsibly?

Justin Francis of Responsible Travel, which offers cruises on small ships and tours of poor old Barcelona and Venice among other cities, suggests: ‘I think we should be looking to visit familiar places in unfamiliar ways, and to seek out unfamiliar places. My number one tip would be to use a local guide. They will help you avoid the crowds and to minimise any negative impacts to residents.

“My second tip would be to make a short stay (to an over-visited city) part of a wider tour to the region. Which leads me to my point about visiting unfamiliar places. For every over-touristed destination there are many others, often rural, that need and would welcome more responsible visitors.”

Just don’t tell everybody when you find that perfect spot.

Christine Manby has written numerous novels including ‘The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club’